River use changes sought by Limerick nuke plant likely to be approved

If the Delaware River Basin Commission follows the recommendations of the agency’s staff when it meets Wednesday afternoon, the Limerick nuclear plant will be permanently allowed to increase the amount of water it adds to the Schuylkill River — and withdraws from it.

The DRBC is a quasi-federal agency with authority over major water decisions that affect the Delaware River Watershed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

According to the docket posted at the DRBC web site, the DRBC staff has recommended to the board approve a number of items long sought by Exelon Nuclear for the operation of the Limerick Generating Station. Those items relate to how much water the plant can remove from the river, the ground and Perkiomen Creek and under what conditions.

The vote is set to take place at the DRBC’s monthly meeting at 12:15 p.m. today (Wednesday) at the Washington’s Crossing Historic Site’s visitor’s center in Washington’s Crossing, Bucks County and is the final step in a year’s long process.

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The changes, sought for more than eight years, were most recently the subject of a joint public hearing held last August in Sunnybrook Ballroom which attracted speakers both for and against the changes being sought by Exelon.

“Limerick Generating Station remains committed to the long-term health of the Schuylkill River and its tributaries,” Dana Melia, communications manager at the plant, wrote in response to a Mercury e-mail seeking comment on the pending vote.

“We have a proud history of environmental stewardship and a host of monitoring programs in place to minimize impact on the river, ensure public safety and promote environmental health,” she wrote. “The pending DRBC docket does not represent a new or expanded water intake request from Limerick Generating Station. It was created to consolidate and clarify 12 prior commission rulings into one docket.”

The changes sought by Exelon are all related to the amount of water withdrawn, consumed and discharged into the Schuylkill River, a drinking water source for more than one million people and whose flow is not always adequate to supply the nuclear plant’s needs without having an impact on the ecology of the river.

Exelon has sought to compensate for the Schuylkill’s shortfalls by augmenting the amount of water in the river from several upstream sources.

Those include three reservoirs in Schuylkill County and a 700-foot deep, mile-long and three-mile wide pool of water pumped from an abandoned coal mine just west of the borough of St. Clair.

The Wadesville Mine pool is unusual among coal mine outfalls because it does not contain the high acidity known as Acid Mine Drainage, which has caused so many ecological problems in coal region streams.

For eight years, Exelon has, with the permission of the state and the DRBC, been adding water from these sources to “augment” the Schuylkill’s water volume and to see if there are any detrimental affects.

Some argue there are; that although the Wadesville water lacks high acidity, it does have higher than normal levels of several metals, including iron, manganese and aluminum.

In its 80-page analysis of the project to this point, the DRBC recognized that these particles may add to the river’s “Total Dissolved Solids” load and have the potential to push it closer to the limit set to protect human and aquatic health.

However, in response to a written inquiry, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection told the Alliance for a Clean Environment, which opposes the changes sought by Exelon, that “Limerick will not be able to comply with a limitation of 1,000 mg/L for TDS.”

The potential inability to meet twice the federal safe drinking water standard may soon be put to the test because as part of the recommendations made by the DRBC staff, Exelon must, for 30 months, study samples of river water downstream of its primary discharge into the Schuylkill to ensure the discharge and overall river quality continue to meet DRBC’s pollution standards for Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS.

If Exelon “cannot satisfy the commission’s TDS requirements, a TDS determination from the commission will be required,” according to the docket.

Also under the jurisdiction of both the DEP and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the amount of radioactive nucleotides in the water discharged by the plant back into the river.

According to the docket, samples taken at the Pennsylvania American Water Co. intake in Royersford and submitted to the NRC show that “no adverse radiological impacts to the environment have been reported.”

Also unreported — at first at least — was the accidental March 19, 2012 release of radioactive tritium-laced water into the Schuylkill.

The NRC reported the spill to the public 23 days later and a subsequent report found it was the fourth overflow, and the second time an overflow put radioactive material into the river, because of a discharge pipe clogged with sediment.

Officials at the time reported that the spills resulted in no harm to the environment or drinking water supplies.

Also sought by Exelon and recommended by DRBC staff for approval is the removal of a rule which limits water withdrawals from the Schuylkill when the temperature rises above 59 degrees Fahrenheit — a long-standing limit meant to ensure the river maintained enough dissolved oxygen to sustain aquatic life. DRBC staff justified removing the limit because no evidence could be found it affected the dissolved oxygen level in the river.

When flow drops below that level, the recommendation is for Exelon to switch over to using water from the Perkiomen Creek, which itself has an augmented flow at times pulled from the Delaware River by a Bucks County pump station and pumped into the east branch of Perkiomen Creek.

Also on the Perkiomen, where low-level weirs have been set up to facilitate the pumping of Perkiomen Creek water to the nuclear plant, the DRBC staff has recommended requiring Exelon to fund a study to see if eel migration in the creek in impeded by the weirs and, if the study finds that to be the case, to build passageways for the eels.

One of the changes Exelon sought that the staff has not recommended — at least not without modification — is a restriction on how quickly water can be pulled form the river, once the upstream sources have been tapped.

Currently, the DRBC requires that Exelon not increase its Schuylkill withdrawals until four days have passed since the upstream discharged; and requires it stop two days after the discharge has been shut off.

About the Author

Evan Brandt has worked for The Mercury since November 1997. His beat includes Pottstown, the surrounding townships and the Pottstown and Pottsgrove school districts, as well as other varied general topics like politics, the environment and education. Reach the author at ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
or follow Evan on Twitter: @PottstownNews.